


Recruiting Hawkeye

by desert_neon (sproutgirl)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, How Clint joined SHIELD, M/M, Pre-Slash, Recruitment, mild violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-24
Updated: 2015-08-24
Packaged: 2018-04-16 23:08:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4643451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sproutgirl/pseuds/desert_neon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Canon says Fury brought Clint into SHIELD. This is that story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recruiting Hawkeye

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ralkana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ralkana/gifts), [raiining](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raiining/gifts).



> This is more gen than slash, really. Very, very pre-slash. Please be aware.
> 
> As always, this is un-beta-ed. I accept all gentle and polite fixes of things gone wrong.
> 
> For raiining and Ralkana, on the anniversary of their births. Ladies, I love you both. Thank you for proving once again that fandom friends are very often the best friends.

Clint surveyed the scene below him. There was a dead body on the ground, and a megalomaniac with some sort of world-destroying machine. There was also a list, filled with indecipherable codes, and the machine’s lights filled the makeshift lab with flashes of green, yellow, and white. Clint was pretty sure that was a bad thing.

He weighed his options in seconds. He could take the shot, and hope like hell the machine wasn’t actually geared up to do its thing, or he could establish contact, threaten and bully and try to get the guy to turn the thing off. But his intel said the machine would literally destroy everything, and the psycho down there was a part of everything, so Clint thought maybe staying alive wasn’t the guy’s main priority.

Clint took the shot. The mad scientist dropped immediately, an arrow through the heart, and Clint jumped down into the room. On closer inspection, he still had no idea how to stop the machine from blowing up or imploding or creating a wormhole, or whatever it was made to do, and he wondered if he should just unplug it.

When he bent to inspect the cable connections, something caught his eye. He moved towards the first corpse, the one the crazy guy had probably killed, and looked more carefully.

Yep. Earpiece.

Clint reached in and removed the flesh-colored communicator, then put it in his own ear and hoped to hell someone was on the other end. “Hello?”

A voice came back immediately. “Hello. Who is this?”

“You can call me Hawkeye.”

“Hawkeye.”

“Yeah.”

The connection was clear enough that Clint could hear the guy take a breath. “Okay. Hawkeye, I’m Agent Phil Coulson of SHIELD. Can you please tell me the situation?”

Clint pursed his lips, impressed. SHIELD was like the CIA, NSA, and FBI, all in one. Possibly with some MI-6, KGB, and whatever other secret government agencies existed thrown in. “Well, Coulson, I can tell you your man is dead, the crazy scientist guy is dead, and the world-ending machine is blinking like crazy, gearing up for something big.”

“All right,” Coulson said, and Clint was actually impressed with the level of calm in his voice. “Is there a list of codes?”

“Yes. Some of it’s covered in blood, but yeah.” He reached down to pick up the list. “I hope you know what this shit means, Coulson, because it looks like gobbledygook to me.”

“I don’t,” Coulson admitted. “Not entirely. But we have people here who can hopefully decrypt it.”

“In time?”

“No sense in trying otherwise.”

Clint had to laugh at that. “All right. First line— Ready?”

“Hit me.”

Clint read the list, line by line, slowly and clearly, while the machine made increasingly worrying noises next to him. “Hey, Coulson?” Clint said, when he was three codes from the bottom. “Your people get anything yet? Because this thing sounds like it’s about to go off.”

“We’ve got some, but not all of it. It’s a puzzle that can only be solved with all the pieces. Just keep going, Hawkeye. You’re doing great.”

“Yeah, okay,” Clint muttered. He shouldn’t feel comforted by that, not at all. And yet. “Next line,” he announced, then continued down the list.

When he was done, there was silence over the comm for a while, and Clint tried not to shift on his feet as he watched the lights blink faster and faster. “Uh, Coulson? You there?”

“I’m here. Sitwell, do you have the— Yes, thank you. All right,” he continued, coming back to Clint. “There’s a red button by a panel of keys. See it?”

“Yeah.” Clint stepped up to the corresponding part of the machine. “Push it?”

“No, not yet,” Coulson said, and where many might have sounded rushed or panicked, he was simply steady and firm. “First key in this sequence: J—K—P—W—F—T. Got that?”

“Got it. Now what?”

“Got some more codes for you. Ready?”

“Ready.”

Coulson talked him through it, key by key, stroke by stroke, and even managed to stay calm when Sitwell—whoever he was—didn’t always immediately have the next line. “Okay,” he said eventually. “That should be it. Time for the red button.”

_“Should be?”_

“Should be,” Coulson repeated, still calm. “Push it.”

Clint pushed it.

The lights immediately died, the noises stopped, and the whir of engines slowed as the machine powered down. Clint exhaled noisily. “We’re good.”

“Good. Thank you.”

“Uh, yeah. Don’t mention it, I guess.”

“Right. So, Hawkeye. How would you feel about joining SHIELD?”

“Are you kidding me right now?”

“No. I’m offering you a job.”

“You don’t know anything about me. I could be this guy’s partner, or his apprentice. I could be some cold-hearted mercenary. You don’t know.”

“Mercenary, yes,” Coulson countered. “Cold-hearted, no. We do know some things about you, Hawkeye.”

Clint tensed, then moved to retrieve his arrow from the scientist’s heart, suddenly more than ready to flee the scene. “Not enough.”

“Agreed. But some of our people think you’d do well here, and have been pushing for your recruitment for a while.”

“Yeah, well. It’s not gonna happen,” Clint said, already lifting his finger to his ear to rid himself of the device. “Thanks for the assist, Coulson. Have a nice life.”

He threw the comm to the ground and smashed it with his boot. SHIELD. As if.

 

_________

 

It was nearly a year before Clint heard that voice again. It was tinny and it crackled, coming through a walkie-talkie with some obvious damage, but Clint recognized it right away.

“Arrows,” Coulson repeated, clearly amused.

“Yes, sir,” the agent holding the walkie-talkie confirmed. “Seven confirmed kills and . . .”

“And?”

“Two of our people, unharmed but very effectively pinned.”

“They were in his way,” Coulson mused, which was one hundred percent accurate. The damn fools had been planning to rush the main target, which would have gotten them killed and ruined Clint’s very masterful plan.

“Sir?”

“Agent Curtis, hold the walkie-talkie up please, towards the rafters.” The agent hesitated for a moment, but complied. “Hawkeye,” Coulson said, his voice carrying across the space. “Thanks for not just offing our people.”

Clint snorted very quietly. He’d considered it, briefly. But he did generally try not to kill the good guys.

Even if they were government stooges.

When he clearly wasn’t going to get an answer, Coulson continued. “The recruitment offer stands, any time you want to reconsider.”

Clint laughed bitterly and saw all the heads below him jerk and look up in surprise. “Join an organization whose agents don’t even check the rafters of a scene, when clearly the arrows came from up high? I’m thinking no.”

“Not their finest moment,” Coulson agreed, censure in his voice. “But it does point to how much we could use a guy like you.”

“Coulson, you wouldn’t know what to do with a guy like me,” Clint shot back, his tone laden with innuendo.

Coulson’s rebuttal was dry and immediate. “You might be surprised.”

Shit, was that flirting? That sounded like flirting. Well then. _That_ , Clint knew how to do, even when it came from the most unexpected source. “Why don’t you come out here yourself and find out?”

“Sorry, but I’m stuck in D.C. for the moment.”

Clint scrunched his nose. Was Coulson a suit? Sure, he was clearly in charge, but Clint hadn’t pictured him as anything but a weathered ex-field agent, still fit and competent and hot as fuck. “Can’t be bothered to fly out to literal B.F.E., Coulson? The sand and dust too much for your fancy suits?”

Coulson, unfortunately, didn’t rise to the bait. “ _Literal_ B.F.E.?”

Clint smirked. “Well, it was last night, anyway.”

Coulson laughed, which seemed to startle the agents on the ground even more than Clint’s presence had. It also distracted the agent attempting to sneak up on him, and Clint took the opportunity to slip away.

 

_________

 

Clint’s cell phone rang in his cargo pocket, vibrating against his leg as well as against the knife that was also stashed there. It surprised him, because only his regular contacts had the number, and they all knew he was deep in a job these past few months, working on getting inside a certain inner circle in order to take out a human trafficker.

Unfortunately, Clint was not the only one in the room, and the planning session stopped as all eyes turned to him. “By all means,” Schultz said. “Go ahead.”

Clint dug the phone out and answered it with a “’Lo?”

“There is a strike team about three minutes away from infiltrating the compound you’re currently in,” a calm and familiar voice said. “Should I tell them they can count on your assistance, or will you be exiting the situation as soon as possible?”

“Look, asshole,” Clint said, thinking fast. “I don’t know how you got this number, but I already told you: I got a job. I don’t need another. Clean up your own damn messes.” Every word was the truth, though he injected more venom into them than he really felt. He needed Schultz and his goons to trust him still, and he needed Schultz alive, in order to get to the anonymous boss in charge of the organization. He doubted even SHIELD knew who it was.

There was a slight pause, then Coulson said, “Understood,” and hung up.

Clint wondered if Coulson _really_ understood, or if that pause was an indication of disappointment. He didn’t like the gut reaction he had at that thought, but there wasn’t anything to be done about it. Besides, it didn’t matter. He didn’t care one whit if he had Coulson’s approval or not. He shoved the phone violently back into his pocket, but he didn’t turn it off.

“Sorry,” he said to Schultz. “Some people are having a hard time accepting that Hawkeye’s got a permanent gig now.”

There was amusement around the table, and Schultz nodded and got back to the matter at hand. Clint kept his body loose and his eyes on the blueprints and maps on the table. He might not go out of his way to help Coulson, but he wasn’t going to ruin it for him either.

Of course, that didn’t mean it went smoothly either. The alarms started blaring about five minutes later, and everyone—Clint included—drew their weapons. Clint took the initiative and opened the door, poking his head out into the corridor. One of the two tac suited agents at the end of the hall immediately aimed for him, but before Clint could even react, the guy’s companion put her hand on his gun and pushed it down. She raised a dark eyebrow at Clint, who ducked back inside.

“There’s no one there,” he told Schultz. “Not yet, anyway. You want me to check it out?”

Schultz nodded. “Take Herrmann. Kinney, go with them as far as the inventory. Load it up and get it out if possible. If not, make sure there’s no one left to talk.”

Kinney nodded and so did Clint, hiding his dismay. But when he led the others out into the corridor, his earlier statement of it being empty was proved true. He went left, towards where he’d seen Coulson’s people, and hoped for the best.

Rounding the corner, Clint found them. The man was crouching behind an open door to another room, visible only through the slit between door and doorframe. The woman, Clint was amused to notice, was holding herself up along the ceiling, arms and legs braced against the walls. Clint kept his gun drawn and his movements “stealthy,” and didn’t flinch in the slightest when the woman dropped down straight on top of Kinney.

He did whirl around, however, feigning surprise and bringing his gun to bear. Herrmann did the same, leaving him open for the male agent to take down from behind. Something must have tipped Herrmann off, though, because he turned suddenly, gun up, and fired. The agent went down, injured but alive, and Herrmann adjusted his aim.

Clint hesitated, but only for a fraction of a second. Then he leapt forward and tackled Herrmann, unwilling to shoot him with a bullet so different from SHIELD’s standard ammunition. They grappled for only a moment before Herrmann went slack in his arms almost at the exact moment a gunshot rang through the hallway.

The female agent had subdued Kinney—Clint didn’t know if he was dead, but he certainly wasn’t conscious—and killed Herrmann. “They’re coming,” he warned. No way would the sound of shots firing not draw the others to their location. “I have to go.”

She nodded and reached into her pocket before tossing something at him. He caught it out of instinct and looked down to see a tiny tracker. He looked back at her, incredulous. If she thought for even a moment that he’d let SHIELD trace him . . .

“It’s not activated. It’s calibrated to your voice and will only turn on when you say the password.”

“Which is?”

“B.F.E.”

Clint didn’t know whether to laugh or shake his head. “Your boss is an asshole.”

“My boss trusts you, for some reason. You gonna prove him right?”

“Guess we’ll see.” He pocketed the tiny piece of tech and gave her a nod. She nodded back, and almost simultaneously they lifted their guns and started firing. Their shots went wide, though hers were a little too close for Clint’s comfort. He grinned and booked it past her and back down the hall, still firing over his shoulder as he kept to a straight path so she could shoot at him without fear of accidentally hitting him.

“Not that way,” he shouted as he rounded the corner and saw Schultz and the others coming. “There’s a whole task force.”

“The inventory,” Anderson said, and Clint shook his head.

“We’ll have to leave them. Come _on_ ,” he commanded, injecting urgency into his voice.

It helped that, at that very moment, a task force _did_ round the corner, consisting of Clint’s new friend and five more agents, all with guns firing. Clint’s reaction of, “Shit,” was not at all exaggerated, and he grabbed Schultz’s arm and took off running.

They escaped, just the two of them. Schultz took them straight to another compound, three hours away by plane.

“Hawkeye, I want you to meet Miss Aust.”

A beautiful woman rose from her seat and glided towards them, hand extended. “The great Hawkeye,” she purred. “I hear you are to thank for getting Schultz back to me.”

“Ah, yes, ma’am. I suppose.”

“And what do you think of my little operation?”

Clint grinned. “Well, given that I’m pretty sure that invading force was SHIELD, I’d say it’s a good thing you’ve got this place all the way out in B.F.E.”

 

_________

 

“Hello, Hawkeye.”

Clint grinned and flopped down onto the bed. “Coulson.”

“I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

“Oh? All the way from D.C.?”

“Actually, I’m over the Atlantic right now.”

“Ah. On your way out, or on your way home?”

Coulson hummed, non-committal, and didn’t answer. “Bad news, Hawkeye. Focus.”

“Yeah, yeah. What’s up?”

“A contract’s been taken out on you. Miss Aust’s associates don’t seem to appreciate your interference.”

“Aw, Coulson, you’re worried about me. That’s so cute.”

“Hawkeye—”

“No, seriously. It’s fine. It’s not like it’s the first time.”

“It’s been offered to the Widow.”

Clint sat up, his attention now fully caught. “The _Black_ Widow?”

“Yes.”

“And she took it?”

“We believe so.”

“ _Shit_.”

“Yes.” Coulson paused. “I can’t . . . There’s only so much SHIELD can do. You understand?”

“Yeah.” Clint stood and started collecting what few things he had out, stuffing them into his bag. “Do you know where she is now?”

“No. But we think she knows you’re in L.A. Drop the job, okay? Whatever it is, just get out of there.”

“I’m going.” He hefted the bag to his shoulder and grabbed his bow case, his stomach sour.

“You could come in.” The offer was soft, almost tentative.

For the first time, Clint truly had to think about his answer. “No,” he said after a moment, opening the hotel room door. “I’ll take my chances.”

Coulson was silent for a second or two. “Okay. Good luck, Hawkeye.”

“Yeah,” Clint said with a twist to his mouth. “Thanks.”

 

_________

 

“Hawkeye? Hawkeye!”

Clint tried to open his eyes. He succeeded, but all he saw was a blurry grey tie and white shirt, both stained with blood. Lots of blood. His hand twitched, but wouldn’t move enough to reach out. “Yours?”

“No, you idiot,” answered a familiar voice. “Yours.”

Clint tried to apologize, to ask why Coulson wasn’t in D.C. or Paris or wherever he’d been going when he’d called. But his eyes gave up the struggle and slid shut again, and he passed out.

He woke up in a hospital in Sacramento with a bracelet proclaiming him to be John Ray and a surprising lack of either bill or guard.

He snuck out anyway.

 

_________

 

“She returned the money.”

“What?” Clint dodged people easily as he attempted to get lost in Mumbai and held one finger up to his free ear in order to hear Coulson better.

“The Black Widow may or may not have learned exactly what business Aust was in. All reports indicate that she has refunded the money and dropped the contract.”

Clint stopped in the doorway of a shop, breathing for what felt like the first time in nearly a month. “So it’s over? Just like that?”

“Well. The money was scattered over several dead bodies, so it appears that, yes, it is. No one will be picking the contract up in her place. There isn’t anyone to re-issue it, really.”

“How do you know it was her? How do you know it wasn’t someone else?” Clint’s questions were met with silence, and he finally understood. “You told her. You got her the information.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Clint snorted, not at all convinced by that pathetic performance. “Right. How’d you do it?”

“I didn’t.”

Clint shook his head, but let it drop. Well, almost. He had to ask, “Hey, Coulson? Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you care?”

The silence was different then; heavier. Weighted. Eventually, Coulson spoke. “Because I do. Because I think you’re better than your job. Because I think you’re a good man. Because I believe that one day you’ll surprise everyone and come in. You already choose your jobs with a careful moral code, and I think someday you’ll see that you can do more good with us.”

Clint didn’t know what to say to that. No one had ever displayed such faith in him before.

But Coulson wasn’t finished. “But maybe that’s all just wishful thinking because I like you.”

Clint tried to croak something out, to come up with some cocky, flippant response but, before he could, he realized Coulson had hung up.

 

_________

 

There was a SHIELD team in Beijing. Clint had been in Macao when he’d heard, and even though the odds were low, he’d known he had to check. He couldn’t explain why, and he didn’t want to think about it too carefully. But he’d learned long ago to listen to his gut, so he’d hightailed it to Beijing.

He waited, and watched, and kept his ear to the ground, and eventually he found them. He’d had a general idea of where they were, and when he saw a familiar face walking the streets, he started to follow her from the rooftops. There was still no guarantee of Coulson’s presence, of course, but Clint’s hopes were buoyed by the sight of his friend from the Aust job.

Coulson had gotten to him. Clint could admit that. The trust the man had in him, the faith. The belief that Clint was actually _good_. It wasn’t enough to make him just walk in and join SHIELD, but . . . Maybe the idea wasn’t as abhorrent as it had once been. 

He paused on a ledge as the woman below entered a café. She sat alone but deliberately placed, and Clint looked to see who was at her back. It was an unassuming man, with receding brown hair and a slightly crooked nose. Clint’s heart sped up as the man shifted and the shape of a holster hidden under a suit jacket appeared for just a second. When the man stood and casually passed by the female agent, dropping his napkin by her feet, Clint’s mouth went dry at the play of muscle under the suit, the fluidity of movement. Was it Coulson? He didn’t know.

But he wanted it to be.

Abandoning the agent, he followed the suited man, who casually walked a few blocks to an office complex, and went inside. Clint settled in to wait on the building across the street, hoping he’d made the right choice in who to tail.

He didn’t have to wait long.

The suited man appeared in a tenth floor window, looked directly at Clint, and gave a little nod. Caught, Clint could only think to lift his hand and waggle his fingers in a ridiculous wave. Coulson—for surely it _was_ Coulson, because who else?—didn’t wave back, but his lips twitched up in a smile, just a little, just for a moment, before he stepped back and disappeared from view.

Clint watched for a few more hours, but Coulson didn’t appear again, and eventually Clint had to go back to Macao. He still had a job to do.

 

_________

 

Clint saw the man approaching him, but since the guy was dressed in head-to-toe black—including a leather duster and eyepatch—and wasn’t trying to be subtle at all, it wasn’t exactly difficult to spot him. Clint slurped up the last of his soda and kicked his feet onto the seat across from him, looking up with casual curiosity as the guy stopped by the booth. “Can I help you?”

“I think so.” The guy slid into the booth, waving the waitress away before clasping his hands on the table and staring at Clint.

“You gonna tell me how, or am I supposed to guess?”

“I’m here to offer you a place in SHIELD.”

Clint laughed in his face. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”

The man sat back, arms crossing in amusement. “Why is that funny?”

“Because I’ve been offered that before. And if I didn’t accept from _him_ , what makes you think I’ll accept from you?” Because he _had_ been thinking about it lately, a lot, but if he did decide to join, he wouldn’t go to anyone but Coulson.

“Because I have a job I think you’re going to want to take. Someone took something of mine, something irreplaceable, and I want it back.”

“You’ve got people,” Clint pointed out. “Good people. Use them.”

Something flashed in the man’s eye, something that told Clint he was about to play his trump card. “They took Coulson.”

Clint dropped his feet to the floor and didn’t hesitate. “I’m in.”

 

 

——end——

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry, guys, I seem to be writing open-ended stories lately. I don't see a sequel in the works, but that's because I _like_ leaving things to your imaginations. If anyone wants to take a crack at where it goes from here, please do!


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